U.S. Pat. No. 7,364,096 to Sosnowski et al., which is assigned to The Toro Company, the assignee of this invention, discloses a sprayer for applying a liquid, such as a fertilizer, insecticide or herbicide, to a turf surface. The sprayer includes a fixed center boom and a pair of pivotal wing booms that carry spaced spray nozzles along their lengths. In a spray position, the center and wing booms are substantially horizontal and aligned end-to-end along a substantially straight lateral axis with respect to the vehicle that carries the spray booms. In a transport position, the wing booms are folded upwardly and inwardly relative to the center boom until the wing booms become disposed in an X-shaped orientation when they reach the transport position.
It would be desirable for many reasons to minimize drift of the liquid being sprayed from the spray nozzles during operation of the sprayer. While various types of shrouds or shields have been disclosed for use with sprayers to attempt to solve the problem of spray drift, previously known shrouds or shields have been expensive to manufacture as well as bulky, cumbersome, difficult and time consuming to assemble or install.
For example, many known sprayers include two sets of booms that can be installed on a given sprayer, namely a first set comprising a plurality of open booms with no shrouds or shields and a second set comprising a plurality of shrouded booms. The sprayer is typically sold by the manufacturer with the set of open booms as standard equipment. The set of shrouded booms is typically offered as an option for purchase at an additional cost by the user. The user typically will purchase one or the other of these sets of booms and use the sprayer with just the purchased set of booms. Obviously, this limits use of the sprayer in some situations. For example, if the user purchases the set of open booms and installs this set of the sprayer, the user may have to wait until there is no or little wind to operate the sprayer in order to avoid undesired spray drift.
If the user wishes to address the problem of spray drift while maintaining the ability to use open booms, the user theoretically could purchase both sets of booms and then use whatever set of booms is dictated by the conditions at the time the liquid is being sprayed. However, as a practical matter, this is not often done. For one thing, it necessitates the purchase of two different sets of booms which is expensive. It also requires at least several hours of time and effort to change or swap out one set of booms for another to switch back and forth between an open boom style and a shrouded boom style. In addition, it requires the operator of the sprayer to have sufficient storage space to store the unused set of booms. For all these reasons, having two sets of booms, one open and one shrouded, and swapping the shrouded set for the open set when one wants to contain spray drift is not a cost effective practice.
Therefore, it would be an advance in the art to be able to convert a sprayer to a shrouded boom configuration in a simpler, faster and less expensive manner.